Everyone knows that Donna Hay is a cookbook icon and each year when one of her cookbooks come out (15 with a 16th out in May this year) eager hordes of people flock to the bookstore to buy the latest book. They’re always lushly photographed and yet the recipes still manage to be achievable. It’s that wonderful cooking equation: looks complicated yet requires minimal effort which is totally addictive and why I adore her books. Plus she is a lovely lady too!

A Cook’s Guide is her newest book which has a cherry picked selection of the best from the How to Cook section from Donna Hay magazine. It shows you the best, basic cooking techniques and recipes-she shows you how to make your own curry paste, gnocchi, roasts, carpaccio, flatbread, sponge cake, scones, souffles, cheesecake and pavlovas but also incorporates variation suggestions so that you can mix it up. An example is the pavlova chapter which has a basic pavlova recipe but also recipe variations  such as almond pavlova stack, rosewater pavlovas with blueberries, chocolate and raspberry pavlovas and brown sugar cupcake pavlovas all using the same basic pavlova methodology.

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Mr NQN and I were shopping the other day. Well more correctly I was dragging him along to the shops and he was dragging his heels. He is usually fine as long as there’s a comfortable place for him to sit and an internet connection but there wasn’t in this case. I told him that if I had my own shop I would make sure that the bored menfolk would have their very own lounge and internet connection so that we could shop in peace. There would be a buzzer system where we could summon them to the changeroom for their opinion when needed.

“So, what would you call your shop?” he asked me.

“Hmmm….something about owls. The name Hooters is obviously out” I quickly added.

“And what would you sell?”

I started to get excited “Well I’m glad that you asked because I’ve thought about it! Of course I’d put some taxidermied owls in the window or other forest creatures. Or if I could I could have real owls but perhaps the local council wouldn’t like that unless they were Harry Potter fans. I’d sell things that I find interesting…like that.”

I pointed at a window. We were in the Blue Mountains over Easter and we had stopped in front of a shop with a window full of waving Queen Elizabeth II statuettes. The figurines were solar powered and upon closer inspection the solar panel sat on top of her handbag. It was fabulous and I knew just who I would buy it for. And before I would give it to them she would figure in my Queen Elizabeth II pudding recipe photo.

Peter Morgan-Jones

Yes this pudding recipe is Queen Elizabeth II’s very own recipe. And how did I get a hold of it? Well I was lucky enough to meet chef Peter Morgan-Jones who worked for Buckingham Palace a few years ago. I was at a lunch hosted by the Trippas White group who cater for the Art Gallery Restaurant, the Botanic Gardens restaurant and 360 Bar & Dining among several others. Peter is the group executive chef across all of the restaurants. He is a quietly spoken, lovely man and when the talk turned to the upcoming royal wedding, he mentioned that he used to work at Buckingham Palace and that he had the Queen’s Christmas Pudding recipe. Excitedly I asked him if he could share it and he told me that he could! Fascinated I read through the recipe. There was no month long steeping of fruit but there was stout, suet and grated carrot and apple.

Peter Morgan-Jones in a palace kitchen on the right

I must admit that I find the whole concept of royalty fascinating. And while I’m not vehemently pro or against I put them in the same category as celebrities. If I like what they say or do I like them but if they don’t then I don’t like them and I don’t take take a general stance on them. But I am absolutely fascinated in taking a peek into their world. What do they eat? Are they like the rest of us? And it seems I had met someone that could tell me all about them from a food perspective which is just what I was interested in!

Peter was a royal caterer for five years and he spent time working at Buckingham Palace , Windsor castle , Highgrove & Kensington Palace (for Charles and Diana), Clarence house (for the Queen mum) and Gatcombe park (Princess Anne). He also ran the Buckingham palace garden parties which were affairs with 8,000 guests and “We used to make 16,000 sandwiches and serve 10,000 cups of tea.” And what were each of their tastes like?

The Buckingham Palace kitchen-note the stag!

Well according to Peter, Charles eats organic fare from his estate at Highgrove. He didn’t eat red meat but occasionally would eat poultry and fish and Princess Diana would eat the same. The Queen and Queen Mum both loved traditional fare e.g. roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. For breakfast she would eat wholemeal toast (dry, from what he saw) and porridge. Her husband the Duke of Edinburgh (Prince Philip) was partial to game with Peter cooking at many pheasant shoots on their shooting estate in Tetbury, Gloucestershire. Peter would also cook for Prince Charles when he would entertain at Highgrove. Charles would host barbecues for all his farming land renters (Duchy of Cornwall) which would feature beef burgers, sausages , lamb brochettes , salmon kebabs, salads  and bread. See, they’re just like us! Well not really

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“Oh my god, that’s Russell Crowe over there!!” one of Miss America’s friends says. And sure enough the Gladiator is sitting there metres away from us.

“What do we do?” someone asks.

“Nothing! Just keep taking photos of the food and not him!” I answer his reputation preceding him.

We’re dining at Flavour of India in Edgecliff, an establishment that has seen its share of celebrities. It occupies a block of road right next to one of Sydney’s most expensive suburbs Darling Point and our waiter tells us that Nicole Kidman has dined “over there” and he points to a quiet corner and this is of course the infamous place where Michael Hutchence had his last meal.

But back to us, it’s native New Zealander Miss America’s twenty year anniversary dinner living in Australia. So having Russell, a native New Zealander who now lives in Australia whom we’ve just reclaimed along with the pavlova is kind of a lucky charm no? We’re having the $49 banquet here tonight. Now I should add that the banquet is not really a banquet and it’s not very good value from what we can tell. You basically have a mixed entree and choose from a list of eight curries for your main and you end off with a tea. Which would cost you about the same if you ordered them separately and then you would get more curries to choose from and there’s no sense of “banquetness” i.e. an array of food unless there are a lot of you happy to share.

Pappadums

We start with some pappadums with mint yogurt, mango chutney and a tomato, onion and cucumber salad.

Mango Lassi

I try a bit of Mr NQN’s mango lassi and it’s not bad although it’s not quite sweet enough with the tangy yogurt but that’s just me perhaps.

Mixed entree

Our mixed entree arrives and it has a tandoori lamb cutlet which is a superb, tender soft cutlet of lamb generously coated in a tandoori yogurt sauce. There is also a piece of chicken tikka thigh which is juicy and moist and also coated with a tikka yogurt sauce. The samosa, something that can often be dry and stodgy has a lovely crispy shell and a delicious interior that avoids all stodge.

Chicken Butter Masala

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